12/14/13 #trickcircle Roundup

The #trickcircle tag on Instagram has become the spot for players to share their latest moves, and we here at @Yoyonews are picking out the best ones to share every week. It’s been a little while since our last installment, so we’ve got a huge crop of amazing material to sort through and it might take more than one installment before we’re caught up, but enough talk: let’s get to the tricks!

@blablablanchard (AKA Riccardo Fraolini) gives us a lot to look at with this insta-monster; this could be taught as a master class in slack composition. From the very opening mount (a pop to trapeze-brother with a hanging slack set up) he proves that this combo is going to be a doozy, and the hits just keep on coming, plowing through two more whips before a visually pleasing slack pinch that resets the mount and a grind that pops him into the final triangle… and an appropriate celebration, of course. Riccardo’s known for his smart and innovative tricks that manage to make you laugh and hit rewind to start learning immediately; for a longer look, you’ll definitely want to check out the R-Special vids on his Youtube channel.

@nehemiahpeterson keeps it short and sweet with this clever whip sequence: it opens with a jade whip, followed by a direction change which sends the slack loop wrapping around your hand an extra time before catching the yo-yo as you mount in a trapeze. It’s a simple variation on some classic whip tricks, and is easy enough to understand once you’ve learned the basic mach-5 whip, but that’s a big part of why it’s so effective. I just wish we could see how he ends it! For those who want some more substance, Nehemiah also submitted this impressive arm trick.

@grantgtj (AKA Grant Johnson, brought to us here by @clywlevi) made waves this year with his hugely innovative Worlds 2A freestyle, and this clip proves once again that he is a 1A force to be reckoned with. Grant’s genius comes from the way that he takes well-known mounts and pushes them in directions we’ve never seen before with style to spare. Never before has a split-bottom to GT looked so good: Grant moves the yo-yo into a gunslinger and then immediately pushes it offplane, which rejects the string and sets his hands up to catch the triangle perfectly. Want more Grant one-handed madness? Check out his PNWR Freestyle.

@mayi____ is still a fairly unknown name, but this combo is more than enough reason to start watching out for him. Seriously, how do you think of this? This sequence thoroughly explores the throwhand thumb mount as a landing pad for all kinds of around-the-arm maneuvers, and both the difficulty and the presentation are ratcheted up considerably due to the fact that he pinches the string and lets the slack hang out. Good variation and expressive body movement also bring this trick to the foreground, and the result is a fully-realized concept leaving us excited for more. As a bonus, check out this bizarre (but totally brilliant) pocketwatch concept from the same set.

@snapsta (AKA Ivan Maslin) leaves us seriously wondering if there’s something in the Russian water that produces such incredible tech players. He blew our minds a year ago with his Innovation Movement part and has steadily been developing into quite the force on the tech scene. While this trick sticks to more or less a single mount for the theme, it packs in an impressive amount of movement and maintains a great sense of tempo throughout. Check out his Werrd Wrecking Crew vid for more goodness.

@zbyszekpanda (AKA Zbyszek Kubiński) shows a great way to mix up inverted and normal trapeze hits while keeping a good head of steam—he definitely does not waste any time racking up the points. One of my favorite parts of this trick would be that his hands retain similar placement throughout, but the combo doesn’t seem to get stale. Part of this is undoubtedly the way that he mixes up hits inside and outside of his wrists towards the end of his combo, and the amount of variations he finds is truly impressive.